The disposal of infectious waste from hospitals and other medical establishments is a major problem. Indeed, the importance of proper and effective infectious waste disposal has become of greater concern in recent years, due to an increased awareness of health problems such as the AIDS epidemic. In part because of the AIDS epidemic, definitions of what constitutes "infectious waste" are being broadened. Consequently, the volume of infectious waste which must be disposed of is increasing. Accordingly, the need for a system or apparatus which will accomplish the safe, efficacious, and cost effective disposal of significant volumes of infectious waste is growing. The need is particularly great for the disposal of solid infectious waste. Solid medical wastes consist primarily of plastic, paper, fabric, glass, and metal which are embodied in such articles as syringes, bottles, tubes, dressing and the like. In the past, these wastes were simply landfilled, but now government regulation generally requires decontamination before disposal.
One method for decontaminating and disposing of infectious waste involves incineration, wherein the waste is burned and the decontaminated ashes are properly disposed. An alternative waste disposal method is to disinfect the waste in a steam autoclave or ethylene oxide autoclave prior to waste disposal. While effective for their intended purposes, both incinerators and autoclaves present ancillary waste disposal problems. Incinerators, for example, are difficult and costly to construct and are relatively expensive to maintain in an environmentally safe manner. Autoclaves too, present additional problems, such as odor, cost and operational complexity. Additionally, waste which has been disinfected by autoclaving typically requires further disposal procedures, such as incineration, prior to final disposition of the waste in such places as ordinary landfills.
With the above discussion in mind, alternative infectious waste disposal systems have been proposed to disinfect the waste. According to these proposals, the waste is contacted with a disinfectant solution containing a chlorine compound to decontaminate the waste. The decontaminated solid may then be disposed in ordinary landfills.
Unfortunately, decontamination of waste using chlorine compounds presents certain technical complications. First, liquid disinfectant loses its disinfectant potency during prolonged storage. Thus, there is a need to use liquid disinfectant that is relatively "fresh" in order to achieve an acceptable degree of waste decontamination. Second, it is relatively difficult to ensure that an appropriate concentration of the disinfectant has been contacted with the waste during the treatment process to sufficiently decontaminate the waste. It is also important, however, to avoid applying too high a concentration of chlorine compound to the waste in order to avoid certain undesirable results, such as corrosive effects and the release of toxic gasses. The present invention recognizes that dry solid precursors of a chlorine based disinfectant can be stored for a relatively lengthy period of time without losing their potency and can ultimately be mixed with water to form the chlorine based disinfectant which is used to decontaminate infectious waste.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for infectious waste treatment in which dry solid disinfectant precursors are mixed with the infectious waste and wetted to produce a decontaminated waste suitable for landfilling. Another object of the present invention is to provide a method for infectious waste treatment wherein process control can be effected with relative ease. Yet another object of the present invention is to remove excess treatment solution from the treated waste before landfilling. Finally, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for infectious waste treatment which is comparatively cost-effective from a capital and operational standpoint.